Violence, Tolerance, Freedom

Catalog description

This seminar examines how the adjective "religious" has been used to modify the nouns "violence," "tolerance," and "freedom." It traces the historical development of liberal ideas of tolerance and human rights, interrogates the common assumption that religion exerts a perverse influence on politics and vice versa, critically examines the concept of terrorism, and connects the neoliberal ideal of unfettered free markets to the idea of being "spiritual but not religious."